How To Die in A Domestic Environment has a basic but inventive set. It consists of fake grass on the floor, and four pens closed off with little wooden fences - in which each of the actors is placed. It evokes watching animals in a petting zoo - reflecting well the play's voyeuristic nature.

It begins suddenly with Edie (played superbly by Laura Evelyn) telling the audience her fantasies. Her childlike and utterly strange delusions are very funny, as is practically every line of the play. Lady Luck (Mary Evans) speaks: she's an ironically named character seemingly obsessed about caring for her cloth man. The Drunk (Joerg Stadler) gets drunk. Mildred (Annabelle Brown) and Maud (Meline Danielewicz) are a dysfunctional mother and daughter. Generally they talk straight to the audience, but occasionally interact.

The characters' raison d'être becomes clearer as they gradually unravel. Lady Luck, who answers questions about herself played from a tape recorder, gives insight with answers which are funny simply because often they are so true of humanity. The Drunk tells outrageously amusing life stories which show pain beneath. Mildred abuses Maud through demeaning her. She regularly feeds her cake before quacking 'Ducky hungry' - funny, but very unsettling. It spirals till she punches Maud in the face. The problem with this is that - because the rest of the play is consistently darkly funny - it's hard not to laugh, even if only out of shock. Make-up is used inventively here too. After being punched, Maud has a black eye painted on her by Mildred, and Edie has one from the start. So it's easy to see who are the abused, and who the abusers. The middle is slow but enjoyable. Towards the end it really picks up. Quite shockingly, Mildred and Maud fight very violently - Maud beats to Mildred to death with a wooden spoon. It sounds horrible, but it's set to The Drunk singing - which makes it very blackly funny. From here, the action escalates.

It's difficult to single out a performance - all are outstanding. But Annabelle Brown shines as neurotic Mildred. A sometimes superb, sometimes frustrating aspect of the production is that all the actors are on stage all the way through. This makes it hard to pick where to look. Equally it could make it easy to have a different experience of the play perhaps on different nights by choosing to watch different characters at different times. Nancy Walsh's directing and script are superb.

Cast Credits: (alpha order): Annabelle Brown - Mildred. Meline Danielewicz - Maud. Mary Evans - Lady Luck. Laura Evelyn - Edie. Joerg Stadler - The Drunk.

Company Credits: Writer - Nancy Walsh. Director - Nancy Walsh. Lighting Director - Peter Barnett. Sound Designer - uncredited. Stage Manager - Danyal Shafiq. Technical Operator - uncredited. Marketing & Press - Clare Lewis. Producer - Joe Fredericks. Producer - Jon Bonfiglio. Company - Mokita Grit Productions. Thanks To: Adrian Berry, Katri Walker, Sam Holden, Jim Robinson, Jo Walsh, Hilary Williamson, Joe Mannion, Kerry Irvine, Antonia Windsor, Juliet Fehr, Emma Sabine, Alison Duthie, Jane Milling, Simon Davies, Eddie Holden, Jilly Holden, Dominic Lindesay-Bethune, Bill Taylor, Martin - The Oxford Pub, John Brookes, Peter Barnett, Eoin O'Shea, Maureen NiFiann, Martin Walsh, Felix Barrett. Supported by Jackson's Lane Theatre

END

(c) Matthew Rose 2009

reviewed Thursday 2 April 2009 / Old Library, Oxford, UK

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com